Public Relations (PR) can play a major role in generating awareness for company news. But companies aren’t making major announcements everyday so what does the role of PR become during these quiet times? It is these in-between-announcement periods that your PR program can actually do some of the most long-lasting brand building.
After a major announcement, you don’t want your customers to think you disappeared so here are some tactics that your PR team should leverage to keep your company in the headlines even when you aren’t making news.
Thought Leadership
Thought leadership usually manifests as a contributed article in an industry publication. These articles discuss legitimately interesting or valuable topics. They can provide market education or best-practices for common industry issues. Thought leadership articles are written by an executive (or ghostwritten by the PR team) and published as editorial content.
This is a chance to establish your executives as credible experts who understand their customers’ pain points. Your company can be one of the solutions offered to address those pain points but it can’t be the only one. Thought leadership articles should be non-promotional and can be slightly evergreen topics. With some engaging writing, a strong knowledge of your industry publications and a unique take on how to address a common problem that is causing headaches across your space, thought leadership can link your brand with helpful knowledge and establish your executives as sought after experts.
Rapid Response
Rapid response is an option for the highly engaged company that, similarly to thought leadership, what’s to establish their executives as industry experts. This practice goes by many names in the PR industry, takes a large investment of time on behalf of the PR team and requires an executive who is camera ready/can provide approval on a quote at a moment’s notice.
Rapid response is a tactic that has a PR team always on the lookout for breaking news related to your industry, but not about your company. Your executives will be weighing in on the news of the day – not talking about any products you sell. It is the industry expert that is called in to discuss other company’s news. If an executive can’t help but take the opportunity to “sell” then this is not something to attempt with your company.
For Rapid responses to work, The PR team will surface news stories relevant to your company’s space and offer a high ranking executive as someone who can provide expert commentary on the news. If a reporter takes you up on this offer, the executive needs to be ready to jump in front of a camera for a live interview or to approve a quote, right away. Some organizations don’t have the tolerance for the speed required to take advantage of rapid response but it is a great way to keep your name in the headlines when you are not making headlines.
Speaking Programs
There are always industry events putting out calls for speakers. A speaking program can be a great way to put an executive in front of a large crowd of prospective buyers. Non-sponsored speaking submissions should be non-promotional and touch on topics that are of interest to the industry.
Always in-demand are customer stories – even better if you can get your customer to speak with you at an event. If you don’t think your executive can hold their own alone on a stage for 30 – 60 minutes, consider a panel presentation. You can assemble a group of like-minded panelists to join you at an industry event to discuss common issues facing attendees. Speaking programs require a PR team to track submission deadlines all year and come up with timely, relevant and interesting topics to engage selection teams.
Awards
At many conferences there are also awards. Avoid anything that is pay-for-play because the credibility of these awards will obviously be less in the eyes’ of your industry. Awards nominations can summarize the projects you’ve worked on all year and earn valuable recognition.
Many of these awards do have deadlines so this is another thing your PR team will need to track but if you can demonstrate that your product outperformed your competition, this is the time to be promotional. Winning awards generates opportunities to put out press releases and brag on social media. Awards are also an excellent way to keep morale within the company high. Employees love the recognition and it can even help with recruiting top talent.
Editorial Calendars
Many print and online publications use editorial calendars to let advertisers know when they will be running focused-issues so they can buy ads in the issues most closely aligned with their products. Are they having a fintech special in June? If so, the editorial calendar will note that and tell advertisers when they need to have their ad space reserved by. This information also tells PR professionals when reporters for those publications will be looking for stories on those topics.
Editorial calendars even tell PR teams when their pitches need to be in to the editors to be considered for that specific issue and who to pitch. It’s a perfect way to know when and who to get in contact with to pitch stories related to the topics you know they will be covering. Keep in mind that they will be receiving a lot of similar pitches during these windows so it’s important to stand out from the crowd. Sometimes editors are looking for products to include in roundups and sometimes they will be looking for executives to speak to about industry issues. To receive placement through editorial calendar outreach, it’s important to be flexible and remember you are fitting into their schedule.
Analyst Relations
Your PR team should be updating industry analysts when there are major announcements for the company but they should also be conducting periodic check-ins with analysts covering their space just to make sure they are up to date. The analysts following your industry will also be working on their own, independent research. It’s important for your PR team to be responsive to in-bound inquiries and be included in analysts research.
Even if you don’t have a subscription/paid relationship with the analyst firm, keeping them up to date once to twice a year and providing input to their research is an excellent way to ensure your company is included in conversations with buyers.
You’re far more likely to be between announcements v.s. firing of industry-disrupting updates every week so having a PR team that is tracking news in your space and knows how to leverage these news-valleys should be an important part of your overall communications strategy.
